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Sportsgist.com gets to talk with Tampa Bay Ray pitcher Chris Mason and his pitching coach down in Durham, North Carolina during and after his Bullpen. Just in case you forgot, Chris is in Durham pitching for the Durham Bulls, the AAA affiliate of the Rays. Our objective was to hang out with Chris and learn exactly what a pitcher does both on the days he pitches and on the days that he does not pitch.  Working in the pen is where a pitcher fine tunes his mechanics before stepping out onto the mound for his next start.

BULLPEN SESSION: 

In this video, Chris is going through the one of the most important, yet underrated, aspects of pitcher: the Bullpen.  Pitching greats such as Greg Maddox and Roger Clemons worked out the kinks in their bullpen sessions.  Chris works on keeping his mechanics in order.  As his coach states, Chris has an unorthodox delivery which makes his timing all the more important.  If he loses his release point or his shoulder flies open, Chris will have a hard time getting out of trouble.  With that being said, Chris has decent stuff.  His fastball is consistently at 87-88 mph and tops out at 91 mph.  He has a good breaking ball and a decent change up.  His deceptive delivery makes it difficult for hitters to pick up the ball…one of the reason why Chris has been successful throughout his career.

Sportsgist.com gets to talk with Tampa Bay Ray pitcher Chris Mason down in Durham, North Carolina the day after his start. Just in case you forgot, Chris is in Durham pitching for the Durham Bulls, the AAA affiliate of the Rays. Our objective was to hang out with Chris and learn exactly what a pitcher does both on the days he pitches and on the days that he does not pitch.

PITCHER’S FIELDING PRACTICE:

In this video, Chris is going through the monotonous routine of pitcher’s fielding practice.  All pitcher’s hate PFP (the baseball term for pitcher’s fielding practice), but they understand that repetition will only help them when they need to make a play.  Making the play could be the difference in winning the game or losing the game.  After PFPs, Chris gets to run around the outfield and shag some BP.  All pitchers’ think they’re Andrew Jones, but running down fly balls actually helps them in their recovery.  After BP, Chris runs a bit to get the blood circulating through the body and then it’s off to the showers.  He watches the game from the stands where he charts every pitch for his time and one inning from the opposing team.  He charts what pitch was thrown, the location, and speed of the pitches.  The life of a pitcher…gotta love it!!!

By Sean Connolly

So we’ve hit the mid-season point and a lot has changed since the beginning, but the question is will this be how it ends. Both Chicago teams, Cubs and White Sox, stand alone in first place in their respective divisions. The Mets’ season has started just as disastrous as it ended last year and the Yankees, well they’re just hanging around waiting for a trade like always. But the big surprise of this season has to be the Twins and the Rays.

Big Surprises

For a team to lose the best pitcher in baseball and get nothing good in return to be 1.5 games back in their division is astounding. The Twins have played it very quietly this season and have made themselves into contenders in the American League. Their ten game win streak came to a close this past Saturday but they easily bounced back with a win over the Milwaukee Brewers. They have a solid, young team with one of the best closers in the game in Joe Nathan. Don’t be surprised if you see this Twin team in the running for the A.L. Wild Card or even the Central Division.

The biggest surprise of the season has the be the Tampa Bay Rays though. They have shocked the American League, putting up a 49-32 record at the mid-way point and have established themselves as a legitimate threat in one of the toughest divisions in baseball, the American League East. Throughout this season people have been calling it a fluke and that it’s just luck, but with half the season gone they are atop the A.L. East and have the players to catapult them into the franchise’s first post-season. They are also beginning to bring in bigger crowds and have been rumored to possibly bring in one of the game’s biggest stars in Ken Griffey. If the Rays can complete a trade for Griffey this team will have to be considered one of the best teams in baseball.

The Second City in First

Is this their year? The Chicago Cubs have finally fielded a team that may be able to get past the curse. But that’s what they think every year. This year is different though. The Cubs have one of baseball’s most potent all-around threat in Alfonso Soriano, and are led by a fiery coach who simply knows how to win in Lou Pinella. The Cubs have the best baseball team with a record of 49-33 and are playoff bound and possibly World Series bound. As for the other side of town, the White Sox have surprised some critics and stand atop a very difficult A.L. Central with a record of 46-35. Ozzie Guillen and his team have played great baseball in a division that was etched in stone by many writers that the Detroit Tigers would win. The White Sox have a powerful team that can score at any moment, and are possibly one trade away from having a team capable of making a significant impact down the stretch.

800 miles east of Chicago sits millions of disappointed New Yorkers. The Mets are crumbling again behind poor management, poor upper management, and poor play on the field. They’ve lost their manager in Willie Randolph in an absolute fiasco that ate up thousands of headlines, and the players such as Jose Reyes, and David Wright, have yet to prove they are as good as their paycheck. Speaking of overpaid, in the Bronx the Yankees are having yet again another unpredictable, chaotic season. New skipper, Joe Girardi hasn’t shown New York much with a 44-38 record sitting 5.5 games back of the Tampa Bay Rays. Injuries of Chien-Ming Wang, Jorge Posada, and M.V.P Alex Rodriguez have hampered the Bombers’ season and have yet to prove that they the best in the bigs as they should be. A trade is looming in New York that could make or break these Yanks but with the tumultuous season they’ve had so far, Bomber fans should consider themselves lucky to only be 5.5 games out.

So with that said I’ll give you the second half predictions with who I think will end up in the playoffs come the end of the regular season.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

EAST- Boston Red Sox

CENTRAL- Detroit Tigers

WEST- Anaheim Angels

WILD CARD- Tampa Bay Rays

NATIONAL LEAGUE

EAST- Philadelphia Phillies

CENTRAL- Chicago Cubs

WEST- Los Angeles Dodgers

WILD CARD- St. Louis Cardinals

If A-Rod comes up one home run shy this season of a record or milestone, blame the MLB for not having instant replay by now. In yesterday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles, Alex Rodriguez drilled a pitch from Lance Cormier below the bleachers and off a set of stairs behind the wall. The ball bounced back onto the the field and Oriole’s right fielder, Nick Markakis quickly threw the ball back in. The umpires ruled it as a double and not a the home run it really was. The MLB has begun to bring instant replay into baseball starting in the Arizona Fall League, but is it right or wrong?

With this being the second hit not correctly called a home run in the past week at Yankee Stadium, the instant replay topic in baseball heats up. On Sunday, Carlos Delgado’s home run was called foul by the umpires on the field, but after second look through instant replay it was clear that it hit the foul poll and was a home run. After seeing the replay of Carlos Delgado’s disputed foul ball, home plate umpire, Bob Davidson admitted that it really was a home run.

I ****ed it up. I’m the one who thought it was a **** foul ball. I saw it on the replay. I’m the one who ****ed it up so you can put that in your paper, bolts and nuts, I ****ed up. You’ve just got to move on. No one feels worse about it than I do.

Bob Davidson

With umpires admitting they were wrong after seeing instant replay, MLB officials have gotten the ball rolling on instant replay. They said they will begin using instant replay in the Arizona Fall League. If successful and deemed useful, instant replay will then be used in the World Baseball Classic. If all goes well we could be seeing instant replay used on homerun calls and foul balls as soon as the 2009 season.

This move by the MLB to start using instant replay brings a lot of debate between whether it will be good or bad for the game. The positives of instant replay in the MLB are numerous. There have been so many mistakes by umpires in MLB history that easily could have been corrected if instant replay was there. Look at the 1996 divisional series between the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees. A young boy, Jeffrey Maier, reached over and brought Derek Jeter’s flair over the wall for a home run. One simple look at a video tape would show that the call should be fan interference, not a home run.

People who say that instant replay would ruin the game, and slow it down are simply wrong. Football, Hockey, and Basketball all have forms of instant replay and neither sport has been ruined due to instant replay. If anything it has made each sport better and more accurate. Why wouldn’t you want instant replay in baseball? I don’t understand why one wouldn’t. It makes no sense. Some people say instant replay would slow down baseball. Listen, it’s slow enough, another five minutes isn’t going to hurt. Plus, if you’re going to sit and watch a game for three hours, wouldn’t you be fine with watching a correctly called game for three hours and five minutes. I know I would.

Listen, we have the technology now to make sure that every call is correct on the field. Why not use it? Every other sport is using it and it has proven to make each sport better. For a majority of these calls you can see the right call after one look at an instant replay. Please Major League Baseball, bring instant replay to the game I love.

By Sean Connolly

According to the New York Times, the federal government will look to question 104 MLB players who tested positive for steroids in 2003. Finally the government is doing something more than just naming names like what happened with the Mitchell Report. I guess they finally realized that they all used them illegally and there may be more than one law broken in using them.

The feds got the test results from a BALCO investigation in which they seized several reports of players using performance enhancing drugs. Now, all those names mentioned in the Mitchell Report who said, “oh George Mitchell didn’t do the investigation properly” or “I never used performance enhancing drugs, he has no proof, just speculations,” will finally have own up to their use.

They will also have to own up to destroying the game that you and I love. Sure a bunch of juiced up fools crushing a ball 400 feet is entertaining, but the integrity of the game was ruined during the 90’s thanks to idiots like Bonds, McGwire, and Canseco. These subpoenas will now force players to tell the truth and reveal what they did to America’s game.

The government will ask these steroid abusers where they got their stuff from and we will find out just how much MLB players will go through to get big and make a couple bucks. The 104 names will be asked to give testimony to either federal agents or grand juries in order to find their suppliers and help clean up sports as a whole. If these players had any brains they would tell the truth. Just look at Bonds, Tim Montgomery, and Marion Jones.

So far the only way these players who have been caught for steroid use have gotten in major trouble is when they lie about it and Bonds with the news he received this week(Indicted on 14 charges) is the biggest juice filled example of that. Just tell the truth so that we can clean the game up, realize your a fraud, and move on from this steroid era.